Setting Up a Response Group

A response group defines behaviors (input arguments) for one or more profiles. Communications Inbound Receiver processes each item based on the input arguments in the response group. When Communications Inbound Receiver starts, it searches for all active response groups and starts them. Because Siebel Email Response processes are managed by Siebel Business Process Designer, response groups use the Workflow Process Manager business service and the RunProcess method for Siebel Email Response work items as defaults.

You begin the setup process by first creating a response group. Then, you assign input arguments that tell Communications Inbound Receiver how to monitor incoming mail for all profiles in the response group. Input arguments allow you to define auto-acknowledgment messages, error messages, and business component fields. Each response group method has different input argument settings.

NOTE: You cannot change the method name of a response group after you generate input arguments.

If you want to make changes to a response group or profile, see Making Changes to Response Groups and Profiles. After making any changes to a response group or profile, you must submit the response group changes for them to take effect.

The final task in setting up response groups is associating the response group with profiles (email addresses). All mail sent to these profiles will be handled as specified by the input arguments assigned to the response group.

CAUTION: A profile should not be associated with more than one active response group or messages may be lost.

To set up response groups, perform the following tasks in the order in which they are presented:

CAUTION: When deleting a response group, you should only delete it from the response group. Do not delete it from the Profiles list because Communications Outbound Manager might be using it to send a message and emails could be lost.

Making Changes to Response Groups and Profiles

Most of the changes that you can make to a response group do not automatically take effect. To have a change take effect, you must click Submit Response Group Changes (for response group changes) or Submit Profile Changes (for profile changes) from the File menu. The one change that does automatically take effect is deleting a response group.

The types of changes you can make are:

Adding or deleting a profile

Changing an input argument

Changing a workflow

NOTE: The Submit Response Group menu item does not work on the Siebel Mobile Web Client.

Submitting Response Group Changes

If you make changes to the response group input parameters, add a profile to the response group, or remove a profile from the response group, you must submit the response group changes for them to take effect.

Automatically Starting a Response Group

When Communications Inbound Receiver starts, it looks at the Active and Server field to determine whether a response group should be started or not. When the response group status changes from Blank/Manual to Active, the change will be picked up by Communications Inbound Receiver and the response group will be started.

NOTE: There is one component task for each response group. If you have two or more response groups, two or more component tasks will be started automatically.

Communications Inbound Receiver can start multiple component tasks, one for each response group. Each task has multiple subtasks, representing a workflow thread that can process inbound messages.